Farming Chit Chat

whelan1 · 21-03-2012 06:16AM

porter shark wrote: »

problems here with scouring calves. its always the same this time of the year, i'm forever asking advice... this year two of the farmers i would look up to have advised me to dose back the mouth, one reccommends 5mls of fromamycin or marbocyl and the other swears by 20mls of penicillin.
has anyone here given eitherof these to calves orally?

what type of scour is it? i would get the vet, never gave antibiotics orally like that... bimastat is a great product maybe try that

just do it · 21-03-2012 06:46AM

porter shark wrote: »

problems here with scouring calves. its always the same this time of the year, i'm forever asking advice... this year two of the farmers i would look up to have advised me to dose back the mouth, one reccommends 5mls of fromamycin or marbocyl and the other swears by 20mls of penicillin.
has anyone here given eitherof these to calves orally?

Agree with whelan1, get the vet. You obviously have a herd problem that needs to be properly diagnosed. Only then can it be treated properly.

whelan1 · 21-03-2012 11:22AM

porter shark wrote: »

problems here with scouring calves. its always the same this time of the year, i'm forever asking advice... this year two of the farmers i would look up to have advised me to dose back the mouth, one reccommends 5mls of fromamycin or marbocyl and the other swears by 20mls of penicillin.
has anyone here given eitherof these to calves orally?

asked my dad, he said when he had pigs they would give 5cc of streptomycin down the throat BUT you still had to find the reason for the scour

roran · 21-03-2012 11:53AM

whelan1 wrote: »

asked my dad, he said when he had pigs they would give 5cc of streptomycin down the throat BUT you still had to find the reason for the scour

I see that you are in Galway. There s a lab in Portumna that'll tell you what bug is causing the scour. I had a problem a few weeks back and it turned out calves had both crypto and rotavirus. They'll tell your vet all in same day.

Muckit · 21-03-2012 11:54AM

scours here aswell on Sunday. Traced it back to an indian and a feed of Guinness on St. Paddy's ..... rough

redzerologhlen · 21-03-2012 12:13PM

Muckit wrote: »

scours here aswell on Sunday. Traced it back to an indian and a feed of Guinness on St. Paddy's ..... rough

Sulpher No.2 given orally will have you dried up in jig time

Username John · 21-03-2012 01:36PM

rancher wrote: »

Was she a texel by any chance? They seem prone to that, don't think it has anything to do with lambing. I get one or two like that every year, I'm having a lot of trouble too this year with ordinary prolapses, I use the harnesses as well and then take out the internal retainer after 24 to 48 hrs.I find the internal one causes infections and irritation making them force whereas you can leave the harness on for weeks if you have to, these are just my observations.....not really veterinary advice

Interesting - I had a good few prolapses this year as well, and I only ever had one in the three seasons before this...

Bit sickening cos one or two were nice hoggetts which will be culled now :mad:

rancher · 21-03-2012 06:35PM

Username John wrote: »

Interesting - I had a good few prolapses this year as well, and I only ever had one in the three seasons before this...

Bit sickening cos one or two were nice hoggetts which will be culled now :mad:

Maybe I'm going to learn the hard way, but I was going to give my nice hoggets another chance... never done it before.
Think they were just too fat this year. The shop where I buy the harnesses says he can't keep up with demand this year.
A lot of the prolapse cases here have ring womb when they come to lamb.

Richk2012 · 21-03-2012 07:18PM

rancher wrote: »

Was she a texel by any chance? They seem prone to that, don't think it has anything to do with lambing. I get one or two like that every year, I'm having a lot of trouble too this year with ordinary prolapses, I use the harnesses as well and then take out the internal retainer after 24 to 48 hrs.I find the internal one causes infections and irritation making them force whereas you can leave the harness on for weeks if you have to, these are just my observations.....not really veterinary advice

She was indeed a Texel . Hmmm thats interesting that there prone to this .. Il keep that in mind when picking lambs to hold back

whelan1 · 21-03-2012 07:31PM

see in the local paper that carrolls engineering went on fire on saturday night, they are a major massey dealer in the north east, they are a few miles from me, i could smell burning on sunday morning , so it must have been from the fire there.... awful thing to happen, workshop and sales area badly dmaaged according to paper

Richk2012 · 21-03-2012 07:47PM

porter shark wrote: »

problems here with scouring calves. its always the same this time of the year, i'm forever asking advice... this year two of the farmers i would look up to have advised me to dose back the mouth, one reccommends 5mls of fromamycin or marbocyl and the other swears by 20mls of penicillin.
has anyone here given eitherof these to calves orally?

Id agree with the two lads about contacting the vet . I was plagued with it about 6 years ago for two calving seasons back to back . Lost over 12 calves with it in the two years . Mine started scouring the first year and despite a cocktail of electrolytes , betamox , biamastat , and caolin i lost about 7 calves.
All the vet could say was try to calve them out of the shed where their cleaner and vaccinate the cows for the following year .
The following year rolled around and i vaccinated the cows about 6/8 weeks before calving . After about 4 cows calved , i started reliving the fcuking nightmare. I nearly strangled the vet when i lost the first 2 calves of the second season as i took his advice (Vaccinate) as Gospel.
A vet from Schering Plough , who manafacture the vaccine , arrived to me a couple of days later to take scour and blood samples of 2 more sick caves .
Long story short , the vaccine "Rotavec Corona" protects the calves from certain basic scours such as Rotavirus and E-coli . My calves were all dying from Cryptosparadium . The vaccine and all other drugs i had being giving them were totally useless , and a complete waste of money . Used Halocur on them and it cured them .
Thank God I havent lost a calf wit scour since then .
Hopefully your calves have just a milk scour or somethin simple but you should find out what it is before you start buying expensive treatments for them

Username John · 21-03-2012 08:21PM

rancher wrote: »

Maybe I'm going to learn the hard way, but I was going to give my nice hoggets another chance... never done it before.
Think they were just too fat this year. The shop where I buy the harnesses says he can't keep up with demand this year.
A lot of the prolapse cases here have ring womb when they come to lamb.

We had one last year (which was the first I had seen, and I guess I would be at home for 4 seasons now)
A nice black faced hogget, prob the nicest one out of our own sheep. She had one single lamb - biggest best lamb we had last year of course... So I decided to keep her this year, to chance it.
She prolapsed again this year :mad:

Mine weren't too fat lambing - the vet said this may be the case, so I cut back on feeding. Maybe a bit too much, as one or two could have had more milk after lambing, but they came into it all right...

But some of the single lambs were very big. Although.. the biggest lamb was 8kg, and she lambed no problems...
I suspect too good feeding early on... as they were on very good after grass for 8 - 10 weeks maybe after the ram was taken away...

I hope it gets better for you - twas a sickening enough lambing here then this year...

stanflt · 21-03-2012 08:22PM

whelan1 wrote: »

see in the local paper that carrolls engineering went on fire on saturday night, they are a major massey dealer in the north east, they are a few miles from me, i could smell burning on sunday morning , so it must have been from the fire there.... awful thing to happen, workshop and sales area badly dmaaged according to paper

think they lost agency before christmas

no a nice thing to happen

whelan1 · 21-03-2012 09:15PM

stanflt wrote: »

think they lost agency before christmas

no a nice thing to happen

no way, i normally send my husband down to get anything we want there, so who got the dealership, that would be a big loss to them

whelan1 · 21-03-2012 09:17PM

Richk2012 wrote: »

Id agree with the two lads about contacting the vet . I was plagued with it about 6 years ago for two calving seasons back to back . Lost over 12 calves with it in the two years . Mine started scouring the first year and despite a cocktail of electrolytes , betamox , biamastat , and caolin i lost about 7 calves.
All the vet could say was try to calve them out of the shed where their cleaner and vaccinate the cows for the following year .
The following year rolled around and i vaccinated the cows about 6/8 weeks before calving . After about 4 cows calved , i started reliving the fcuking nightmare. I nearly strangled the vet when i lost the first 2 calves of the second season as i took his advice (Vaccinate) as Gospel.
A vet from Schering Plough , who manafacture the vaccine , arrived to me a couple of days later to take scour and blood samples of 2 more sick caves .
Long story short , the vaccine "Rotavec Corona" protects the calves from certain basic scours such as Rotavirus and E-coli . My calves were all dying from Cryptosparadium . The vaccine and all other drugs i had being giving them were totally useless , and a complete waste of money . Used Halocur on them and it cured them .
Thank God I havent lost a calf wit scour since then .
Hopefully your calves have just a milk scour or somethin simple but you should find out what it is before you start buying expensive treatments for them

got the last oocide disenfectant buckets that my vet had today, its off the market:mad: only thing for disenfecting and killing the crypto bacteria in a shed

Bodacious · 21-03-2012 10:24PM

I let my weanling/yearling heifers off to grass today, I bought 2 of them
Oct 29th so nearly 5 months now feeding them, sick of feeding, great to see them tucking in! Weather good for foreseeable forecast also, will also leave more haylage for late calvers

Can't beat this dry weather, chain harrowing and rolling

sideboard · 22-03-2012 12:20AM

Bodacious wrote: »

I let my weanling/yearling heifers off to grass today, I bought 2 of them
Oct 29th so nearly 5 months now feeding them, sick of feeding, great to see them tucking in! Weather good for foreseeable forecast also, will also leave more haylage for late calvers

Can't beat this dry weather, chain harrowing and rolling

cant help thinking of those weanlings on grass (in a slight west indian accent) "mmm mmm mmm, grass mon, and he's chain-harrow-ing-and rollin' mon....way to go mom"

:D:D

porter shark · 22-03-2012 12:39AM

thanks for all the advice boys. i probably could've been clearer describing the problem though. we calve in the shed from september through to may and it is this time of the year that the problems start every year.
might calve 80 with three losses and be thinking things are going well but then every single one of the last 20 or 30 will attempt to die.
disinfecting shed, tablets, bimostat, sulpha no.2etc all help but without morning and evening sucking i think they'd all die.
if crypto was the problem would it be present all year?
i always think its just milk scour but if it is why does every calf get it once one gets it? before christmas theres absolutely no problem.
is this anything like your complaint rich? you think i should hive halocur a try?

whelan1 · 22-03-2012 05:23AM

porter shark wrote: »

thanks for all the advice boys. i probably could've been clearer describing the problem though. we calve in the shed from september through to may and it is this time of the year that the problems start every year.
might calve 80 with three losses and be thinking things are going well but then every single one of the last 20 or 30 will attempt to die.
disinfecting shed, tablets, bimostat, sulpha no.2etc all help but without morning and evening sucking i think they'd all die.
if crypto was the problem would it be present all year?
i always think its just milk scour but if it is why does every calf get it once one gets it? before christmas theres absolutely no problem.
is this anything like your complaint rich? you think i should hive halocur a try?

what disenfectant do you use?

just do it · 22-03-2012 06:27AM

porter shark wrote: »

thanks for all the advice boys. i probably could've been clearer describing the problem though. we calve in the shed from september through to may and it is this time of the year that the problems start every year.
might calve 80 with three losses and be thinking things are going well but then every single one of the last 20 or 30 will attempt to die.
disinfecting shed, tablets, bimostat, sulpha no.2etc all help but without morning and evening sucking i think they'd all die.
if crypto was the problem would it be present all year?
i always think its just milk scour but if it is why does every calf get it once one gets it? before christmas theres absolutely no problem.
is this anything like your complaint rich? you think i should hive halocur a try?

At the risk of repetition you need samples taken and analysed to see what bugs you're dealing with, i.e. your vet's involvement. Then the appropriate treatment will be apparent. Maybe you've a cow producing a PI calf at this time of spring each year. Halocur won't cure that.

rancher · 22-03-2012 06:49AM

Richk2012 wrote: »

She was indeed a Texel . Hmmm thats interesting that there prone to this .. Il keep that in mind when picking lambs to hold back

A bit harsh to say prone to putting out their guts.....1or2 cases per year in 500 ewes, not exactly an epidemic but I've never seen any other breed doing it

5live · 22-03-2012 10:54AM

Spent yesterday getting all my jobs sorted for today to finish the spreading. Up early and cows waiting at the gate. Milked and calves fed for 9, no bother:D. Went to get the tractor to load up and front tire flat:mad:. Went to get the other one to pump it to take it to get it fixed and it wouldnt start:mad::mad:. Some eejit (me:o) left the key on for 2 days, turned once and died.

God but i love this farming lark:rolleyes:

Muckit · 22-03-2012 11:08AM

When things are going too good, that's when you want to watch out! :rolleyes:

pakalasa · 22-03-2012 12:34PM

Yep, it's when you take your eye off the ball.

leg wax · 22-03-2012 02:04PM

pakalasa wrote: »

Yep, it's when you take your eye off the ball.

wheres the ball:eek:.could not see it there for 3 weeks.:mad:

dar31 · 22-03-2012 06:59PM

ran out of water today, had to turn on the council water.
usually only have to do this for a month in august.
have three supplies, gravity spring, well, and then council, all filling into 3k gl resiviour. gravity was only trickling in, and well pump couldn't keep up with cows, was doing a bit of power washing but not enough water used to cause problems

whelan1 · 22-03-2012 07:04PM

dar31 wrote: »

ran out of water today, had to turn on the council water.
usually only have to do this for a month in august.
have three supplies, gravity spring, well, and then council, all filling into 3k gl resiviour. gravity was only trickling in, and well pump couldn't keep up with cows, was doing a bit of power washing but not enough water used to cause problems

we had to lift our pump a few weeks ago as it was blocked with iron, working fine now, touch wood..... how much will the mains cost?

dar31 · 22-03-2012 07:19PM

whelan1 wrote: »

we had to lift our pump a few weeks ago as it was blocked with iron, working fine now, touch wood..... how much will the mains cost?

not sure, last year was first time paying for it.

had pump on out farm up last month as well.
first time out found break in cable, replaced cable
2nd time replaced pump, still kept triping out
3rd time changed pigtail cable from pump to main cable
eventually worked, took 4 days as sparks was doing it in the evenings, had to let the cattle out of the shed to the river to drink.

whelan1 · 22-03-2012 07:29PM

amazing how much we take water for granted

redzerologhlen · 22-03-2012 07:54PM

The uncle brought his Charolais bull to ennis today. He was 1100kg, couldnt fit up any of the chutes so they let him in through the sheep pens. Unsold at €2200, said he wants €2500 for him!!

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